What were our Top 25 reviews & other blogs in November 2016?

As it’s the first of the month, we’re taking a brief moment to remind ourselves of the most popular contributions from our 20+ syndicate Mates bloggers from the month just closed. What were the reviews and other blogs that got readers clicking most? Any surprises? Our Top 25 Mates Blogs from October 2016 (including gaggles of reviews for our most read-about shows) are listed below with summaries and links to read more.

Libby Purves, Laura Kressly, Ian Foster, Emma Clarendon & Johnny Fox: Glenda Jackson’s return to the stage after more than two decades serving as an MP certainly should be a momentous occasion, and in one of the great roles. At age 80, in a time where audiences and theatremakers are clamouring for more diversity, Jackson as King Lear is an obvious choice.

Libby Purves, Aleks Sierz, Laura Kressly, Ian Foster, Emma Clarendon & Caroline Hanks-Farmer: Twenty years ago, there was a lot of it about: light comedies afloat in the West End, chronicling the disintegration of a suburban marriage while simultaneously lampooning the middle-class…

Libby Purves, Jonathan Baz, Johnny Fox & Ian Foster: The musical Half a Sixpence bounds into the West End from Chichester, newly adapted by Julian Fellowes, with a spring in its step and an infectious grin.

Edward Seckerson & Ian Foster: It’s no secret that I’m a big Ivo van Hove fan, I’ve been to New York and Amsterdam several times to see his work as regular readers will know, so booking for his latest show to hit…

Libby Purves: Jim Lichtsheidl’s Erik, concentratedly morose, reflects on how a lost watch makes him realize that “nothing is the way I thought it was”. He is having to put up with his uncommitted, wayward, gormlessly rambling friend Ron – Mark Rylance.

Ian Foster, Laura Kressly, Caroline Hanks-Farmer, Johnny Fox, Edward Seckerson & Jonathan Baz: When The Last Five Years announced an extension of a week just after opening, it meant I was able to nab a pair of cheap tickets down the front, conveniently on the side where the shirtless…

Carole Woddis, Aleks Sierz & Ian Foster: When I was at primary school, we did a thing in needlepoint where we sewed seemingly random shapes in a line and only when we’d finished and Mrs Holcroft (I think it was) told us to look…

Johnny Fox, Emma Clarendon, Caroline Hanks-Farmer & Ian Foster: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad” wrote Philip Larkin and it is precisely that sentiment that sits squarely at the heart of Sam Shepard’s Fool For Love currently playing at Found 111.

Luke Jones, Aleks Sierz & Emma Clarendon: The Children are the focus of this play, in their absence. Instead we have The Pensioners. Parents and a non-parents sinking beneath the expectation of and the responsibility to the younger generation.

Jonathan Baz & Ian Foster: Shifting London’s Old Compton Street south of the river, the run up to Xmas sees the Union present Stiles & Drewe’s newish Soho Cinders, their Cinderella for the 21st Century, as a…

Daniel Perks & Aleks Sierz: It was a pleasure to sit among a predominantly young audience – still at the dating stage and pretty hip, this being Hackney – and hear the hoots and shrieks of recognition in laughter.

Terri Paddock: How has our response to Philip Ridley’s rage-filled Tonight With Donny Stixx changed since the ‘halcyon days’ of 2015 when it was first staged? Ridley, director David Mercatali and star Sean Michael Verey.

Carole Woddis & Jonathan Baz: An evening of two short plays sandwiched between the verbatim thoughts of Reprieve’s Clive Stafford-Smith, Drone… examines the psychologies at play behind the controllers of America’s drone fleet.

Ian Foster: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas….” The festive season is nearly upon us and if you are making a shopping trip to the bright lights or you just love the feel of Christmas in London, these shows will get you in the mood. And the Mates have tickets for them all!